Clark County District Attorney David Roger has called the September 2008 trial contentious but fair, and the sentences just. He had urged the justices to deny both appeals.

Simpson's attorney Yale Galanter characterised his client's conviction as prejudicial "payback" for his 1994 double-murder acquittal involving the 1994 deaths of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ron Goldman in Los Angeles. Simpson, a pro football Hall of Famer turned actor, was later found liable for the deaths in a Los Angeles civil lawsuit and ordered to pay damages to the victims' families.